The Dare
by aadarshinah
Summary: The story of what happened between the Shipyard Bar and the Kobayashi Maru - ie, an Academy fic, with Mentor!Pike and a lot of Bones.
1. The Shipyard Bar

**The Dare  
**A _Star Trek: 2009 _Story

* * *

_Chapter One: The Shipyard Bar_

* * *

He thought he had finally succeeded. He was – _finally_ – his own man. Dad's shadow couldn't hang over him any longer, and he was celebrating that fact.

_("You know, I couldn't believe it when the bartender told me who you are."_

"_Who am I, Captain Pike?" _

"_Your father's son.")_

He should've walked out on Pike right then. He would have, if he'd been completely sober – or a little more drunk. Here was a man – yet another person in a long line of people he didn't even know and who, probably, had never known his father either, who thought they knew him – judging him by his father's spectre.

Sometimes, Jim hated his dad. He died so god-damn heroically, so perfect and noble and impossibly perfect. Every wrong he might ever have done was washed away by that day on the _Kelvin_. He's not a real person, George Kirk, he's a fucking saint, and no one can ever compare to a saint.

So he stopped trying, long, long ago.

_("You know that instant to leap without looking? That was his nature too.")_

It doesn't work, though. He should've have expected it to. He'll ever only be _Jim, the poor _Kelvin_ baby_. Except for when he's _Jim, whose poor mother died_, which had led to him becoming _Jim, the poor Tarsus IV survivor_ 'cause Frank was okay and all, but, given the choice between his stepfather and his aunt, he'd have picked his aunt every time, and _Jim, who was too smart for his own good, _though he'd been that one before Tarsus, as well as after. Sure, those smarts had saved him a couple times, but, for the most part, they were nothing but trouble.

So he tries his best to be as different as possible. Mom was a biologist, before the rad poisoning took her, and Dad was a pilot. According to Mom (in the one less-than-positive thing she'd ever said about her late husband, her first husband, the one who Frank could never compare to either, though Frank, at least, didn't seem to care he'd never measure up, and that equanimity was the one of the things Jim had respected about his stepfather), Dad had been awful with computers; he could pilot a ship, yes, but anything more complicated than a coffee maker was beyond his abilities, tech-wise. To this day, Jim doesn't know how that was possible.

But it was what is was, and so, when he got bored after Tarsus (which was a lot, that year he spent mostly in the hospital, more than usual) and they let him sign up for classes at the university the 'Fleet hospital was attached to, he took everything in computer science they offered. And there he was _Jim, who was just too smart_ again. He couldn't explain how he knew so much math, so much science (not without telling them about the massacre, and it was one thing if the doctors knew, 'cause there was no way they couldn't know, but having his teachers and classmates know was something else entirely; he couldn't stand the thought of them looking at him, _knowing_) at fifteen, so they still looked at him, made up rumours about him that he was supposed to hear, but at least it was better than being _Jim Kirk, George's boy_. Better to be vilified for being _Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory_ than _Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare. _

(_"If you're half the man your father was..."_)

But it kept on, even after he got the bachelor's at eighteen, the master's a year later. He'd his bike by then, and would spend weeks on I-90, going back and forth between Ithaca and Riverside, getting arrested in Chicago and Cleveland and every city between between so often he's on a first name basis with half the cops on the route. And, when he's not spending the night in jail (and sometimes even then, some of the sheriffs knowing what a screwed-up fuck-up he is and knowing he – usually – won't cause them any trouble in lock up if he's given his padd), he works on his dissertation. Ithaca, 'cause he's spent so much time at Cornell by now that all the professors know him and will put up with his shit so long as he gets his work turned in on time and showed up once or twice a month to talk to his advisor. Riverside, 'cause Frank was the one they released him to after Tarsus ('cause he literally has no one left after) and even though the state emancipated him after he got out of the hospital, Frank still cares and puts up with his shit too, so long as he doesn't drag it into his house, and 'cause they're building the new Constitution-class starship there and his dissertation's on the ever-more-sophisticated VI-systems needed to run a ship of that size. The guys at the yard even let him help shake out the bugs on some of the programming, off the books, 'cause Frank heads security there and he's _Jim Kirk, George's boy_, but he enjoys it too much to really care about their motivations.

_("For my dissertation, I was assigned the _USS Kelvin_.")_

And then, today, six weeks after his twenty-second birthday – twenty-two years forty-two days after all this started, when life went to hell in a hand basket, though he only guesses that this isn't the way life is supposed to be, 'cause it's always been like this for him, 'cause life has only ever offered him shit – he's disovered that he has nothing left. He's supposed to be celebrating passing his B Exam tonight, 'cause he just got news that the university approved his dissertation and they'll be sending him another diploma to put with the rest, if he can remember where those are, but in reality he's mourning. He doesn't have the slightest idea what to do now that he has all the degrees a sane person can really need and, though he could go work for real on programming the ships in the yard just right behind him, he doesn't think he can take the whispers of _Jim Kirk, George's boy_ all the time. He's settled nicely into his routine of bars and jails and nights in random hotel rooms along the I-90 and the idea of leaving it, of having to act professional and become _Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare _irks him in a way that nothing else ever could.

He doesn't even fight back – not really – when they start beating on him.

_("'Cause I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor. Your aptitude tests are off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the mid-west?"_

"_Maybe I love it.")_

It's not the the repeat offender part that he loves, though, and Captain Pike seems to know that. It's the lack of expectations. Oh, people still expect things from him, but his professors had long ago since given up comparing him to his father, and his stepfather was as easy going about his shit as he'd been about Mom's frequent off-planet deployments. It's the knowledge that, outside the university, he's not going to be able to hide from that anymore. He'll have to inure a whole knew group of people, wherever he goes, whatever he does, and, no matter how hard he tries, it'll be at least a year before they stop thinking of him as _Jim Kirk, George's boy. _That's how it went at Cornell. Perhaps he'd spoiled himself, staying at the same college all these years, but the idea of having to face the whispers anew is just so exhausting...

_("Look, so your dad dies. You can settle for less than an ordinary life.") _

Yeah, Pike knows all about the expectations, but he doesn't know jack shit about him. The only part of Jim's record he had to have looked at was the arrest sheet, 'cause, even in his book, a _philosophiae doctor _(which probably isn't in the file yet, having just come through today) and a _magister in ingeniaria_ (which is definitely there, he's had it pointed out to him by one too many sheriffs for it not to be) at twenty-two is hardly an ordinary life. Pike thought he was nothing more than _Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory, _and, though that was what Jim had wanted all along, though he was his own man at last (or should have been; should have been able to walk to the shipyards behind him in the morning when he'd sobered up and apply for a job that he knew he'd get programming their VI; should have been able to steel himself for all the whispers he'd never be able to avoid; should have been able to tell himself that the computers he would program in the ships they were building would be faster, smarter, more durable, and less likely to fail in when an evacuation order was given so no one else would have to be a hero), he couldn't shake Pike's words...

_("Or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special? Enlist in Starfleet."_)

He knew he'd not succeeded then. That, no matter what, he'd always be _Jim Kirk, George's boy_ no matter what he did. No matter how hard he tried to be anything but the clean-cut, straight-and-narrow Iowa farm boy Dad had been. No matter how many degrees he got. He would never, ever, be anything thing but _Jim, who could never compare_.

_("You could be an officer in four years. You could have your own ship in eight.")_

That's when he knew what he had to do. Well, not exactly then, but as he was passing into Missouri hours later, having gotten on his bike outside the bar and just _driving_. He couldn't escape his father's ghost, not without beating him at his own game.

_("You know, your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's. And yours.")_

He knew it was stupid. But he turned around anyway.

_("I dare you to do better.")_

When he got to the shipyards, he should have walked into the main building. He should have walked into Frank's office, told him about passing the B Exam; made plans to meet up for a drink. He should have gone up a floor, talked to Sydney about that job. He should have done anything but find Pike's shuttle.

But he did.

"Four years? I'll do it in three."

It was the only way he could ever be his own man.

* * *

a/n: So, in attempt to break my writer's block of the last month or so, **WarpGirl** on Triaxian Silk suggested, instead of trying to force myself to work on "A Grief Shared," to work on something else. This idea sorta floated into my head. At some point, it may become a companion peice to "AGS", but by no means is that required reading. If you're familiar with ENT, just assume that TATV never happened. This probably won't end up being updated regularly either, at least not once I get back into the flow of "AGS," but reviews and comments are still appreciated.


	2. Nichols Dormitory

_Chapter Two: Nichols Dormitory_

* * *

The first night in the dorm, he dreamt of Tarsus.

_("The revolution is successful.")_

Not that he remembered his dreams, exactly. The way he'd woken suddenly, though, his heart thudding so loud in his chest he was surprised it hadn't woken half the dorm and the Academy-issued sheets he was tangled in drenched with sweat, those were classic signs of Tarsus dreams.

It was his own damn fault. He'd only been thinking of ghosts and how to banish them when he'd made the decision to enlist in Starfleet. The thing he'd forgotten in all his rush to finally – _finally – _be something other than _Jim Kirk, George's boy_ was that Starfleet was a military organization.

_("Survival depends on drastic measures.")_

Oh, he was fine when Pike was taking him and the doctor he'd met on the shuttle, McCoy, across campus to Ellington Hall for their in-processing. Since the new academic year did not technically start for another five days, it was just the two of them and one very young petty officer, who snapped to attention so fast when Pike entered the room McCoy had muttered something about whiplash. Which was probably for the best, considering neither of them were exactly your average, model recruit material. He'd been too caught up in the newness of the Academy to really pay attention to any of it, especially its red-clad denizens.

And he was fine most the rest of the day, taking more placement tests than he had since he was fifteen and testing out of multi-variable calculus and computational physics from his hospital room, even though the maths and sciences and hand-to-hand he was testing out of were all things he'd picked up (been forced to learn) on Tarsus. There was simply too much to do, and, when he'd met up with McCoy again at the Bayside Mess for a hurried lunch, the doctor had not given him a real chance to digest the morning's events, complaining less-than-good-naturedly about their new uniforms and the first-year med school idiocy they'd been testing him on the entire time – an action for which Jim was thankful. Besides, the doctor seemed to find ranting somewhat cathartic and who was he to deny the man?

And then, quarter past five, just when he was sure that they couldn't find any more tests for him to take even if they wanted to, he was called to Pike's office. Turned out the guy wasn't just any recruiter, but the head of the whole God-damn Starfleet Recruiting department (which at least explained how he'd managed to get his _genius-level repeat offender_ ass into the Academy, which Jim had been kinda curious about, when he'd time to be curious) and had a wonderful eighth floor bay-view office that Cheryl, his thesis advisor back at Cornell, would have killed for.

_("Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.")_

Before he even got to see the office, though, there was a largish waiting area with another of those oh-so-very young petty officers manning the front desk. And it was there, in his crisp new cadet uniform and surrounded by all the usual recruiting propaganda that was to be expected in any place designed to lure in the unsuspecting and sell them on an idolized dream, that he realized just what he'd gotten into.

And that's when the memories of Tarsus began to creep on him.

It had been a beautiful planet, Tarsus IV; a utopia to a boy who'd just lost the only parent he'd ever known. He could've stayed with Frank and maybe should have, but Aunt Laura was his mom's sister and oh-so-very cool. There'd been no decision in his mind. Sam had left the day before the funeral and Frank, well, he was trying his best, but he wasn't taking Mom's death well. There was nothing for him in Iowa and, still very much a naïve child, he'd believed in the lie of fresh starts and new beginnings.

_("Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony.")_

For a year, it _had_ been perfect, though. There was his aunt and his two young cousins and he didn't have to go to school (and be bored _all the time_) but could take classes at his own pace through the computer (he devoured the history classes) and read whatever he wanted on his free time (with no well-meaning teacher coming over to him and saying _don't you think that's a little advanced for you, Jimmy?_ no matter how many times he told them not to call him that). After he'd been on Tarsus about six months, he even managed to catch the eye of one of the governor's men and, after some tests (not unlike the ones Starfleet had asked him to take today, he remembered with a shudder), he was invited to join a special class the governor was setting up for kids like him, where they could study and learn and become future leaders of the colony and all that shit that his aunt had eaten up and he'd gone along with because, hey, at least he'd finally be with people as smart as he was.

The school wasn't quite what he'd expected. There was a lot of math and a lot of science – mostly physics, but there was a lot of chemistry and some biology too – and not much of the histories he loved and even less of the books. Jim was the youngest of the twelve in the class, youngest by at least a year, but he was the smartest and, because of that, the governor didn't make too big a fuss over him wanting to read histories older than the Romulan War, let alone things like Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and Klauss.

He'd been on the colony just over a year when the plague struck. He was safe in the palace when the news came, and the governor told him it would be easier on his aunt and cousins if he stayed there for a while, 'til the relief efforts came, and he'd been young enough to believe that lie, at first.

But the news he was told about his family and the plague just didn't add up. Biology wasn't one of the governor's focuses – no, he wanted them to know everything necessary to run a starship, though there weren't any on Tarsus – but Jim knew enough even then to know that that plagues didn't move a fast as Kodos was claiming, and that the food stores would last a lot longer than rumour would have it. So he packed all the food he could get his hands on and left the palace, wanting to find his aunt to tell her what was going on because, surely, if anyone could figure out what was up, she could.

_("Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death."_)

His aunt's house was empty by the time he got there.

_("Your execution is so ordered."_)

All the houses were empty in that part of town. He could hear a commotion coming from the town centre, though...

_("Signed, Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.")_

Four thousand people were crowded into the square. Around them were the crisp, uniformed officers of the palace guard, herding their captives closer with the business-end of their phase rifles, while Kodos stood on the podium and ordered their deaths.

_("The revolution is successful.")_

One of the officers saw him at the square recognized him. He thought that Jim had snuck out to _watch the fun_ and saw to it that he got to the podium before the governor had finished speaking. Kodos didn't even look upset at seeing him there, just smiled like a god-damn benevolent uncle and continued on with his grandiose lies.

_("Survival depends on drastic measures.")_

There was nothing he could do to stop it.

_("Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.")_

Nothing at all.

_("Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death."_)

There were no illusions after that. Kodos made it clear to his special class (his own god-damn _Hitler-Jugend, _why hadn't he seen it sooner?) that there was no plague, that they would take over the 'Fleet ship sent to provide aide (surely not heavily armed, he figured, but enough that they could use it to capture a stronger ship because they were faster and stronger and better than normal people), and from there they would grow until they could mould the whole Federation to fit his crazed eugenic ideals...

The other were older, more fanatical, and believed whole-heartedly everything Kodos said. Jim pretended. He tried to find a way to hack into the subspace communications terminal, to warn the ship that was surely coming, but it was too well guarded by the palace guard, and one day, three months into the "plague" he was caught.

There was no mercy. Not in Kodos' dungeons. They thought three weeks there (no food, no water, no rest, just whips and fists and chains and shouts and _reprogramming_) were enough to set him "back on course" - which it did, long enough for him to sneak out of the palace with all the food he could carry and run.

He found others.

_("Survival depends on drastic measures.")_

He took care of them as best he could, stealing food and making bombs from whatever he could get his hands on and running, always running.

_("Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.")_

It was inevitable that, eventually, he'd get caught.

_("Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death.") _

This time, there was no escape. They found him almost six weeks later, the unfortunate crew of the _Passchendaele_, who had brought more fire-power with their relief efforts than the governor had anticipated. Jim was taken back to Earth, to Frank and the hospital at Cornell...

...but he could still remember those crisp uniforms and the heartless soldiers who slaughtered so many...

The ghosts of Tarsus IV were the ones he was trying to banish when Pike finally called him back into his office.

"You're something else entirely, Kirk," Pike said the moment the door closed.

Jim knew by the padds that were spread out before the captain exactly what he was talking about, but plays dumb anyway, because it was habit by now and habit is just about all he can function on when remembering _that place_. "So I've been told."

"The Dean of the Academy Board demanded a meeting this afternoon. I went into it thinking that I was going to have to defend granting admission to a cadet who had neither applied or sought nomination to enter the Academy, and who had nearly two dozen convictions on record." There were also a handful of sedition charges and two counts of treason, if one counted Tarsus.

Which Jim didn't, normally.

_("Survival depends on drastic measures.")_

Normally, Jim forgot about Kodos; forgot that he'd been alive between May '45 and February '47, and, normally, it worked. He could go months without thinking about any of it and then, suddenly, look at the calendar and find it was the anniversary of the massacre, and that would be enough to send him into a tailspin of memories and alcohol that had accounted for five of the drunk-and-disorderly charges against him. But he'd dredged up too many memories in the outer office for the rest to stay safely buried.

_("Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society.")_

"Just misdemeanours."

"That was the Board's reasoning. No, imagine my surprise when the Dean didn't want to know why I'd recruited you, but rather why I'd recruited Cornell's star programmer for command track when you could be a commissioned a Lieutenant Commander and programming for the 'Fleet in a year."

"I've no desire to be holed up in some office in R&D or stuck as a junior science officer on a ship somewhere. If I'm going to enlist," Jim had gestured to the uniform he was already wearing, though he wouldn't officially be a cadet until Monday, when the new semester started, "I'm going to go command track or nothing at all. That's why I didn't mention it."

"There a reason why you want to set aside everything you've spent the last seven years studying to, basically, start from scratch?"

There was - junior science officers rarely got the chance to be heroes, and he'll have to become the most decorated officer in Starfleet if he's ever going to escape George Kirk's ghost, which is the only reason he joined and may, at this point, be the only reason he's still alive, - not that he'd ever tell that to Pike, who looked, ell, not disappointed exactly, but disheartened, at his silent shrug.

"Well, I'm not going to try and talk you out of it. You've the makings to be one of the best damn officers in the 'Fleet, if you want it badly enough."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

_("The revolution is successful.")_

They'd talked a while longer, about the classes that Jim had managed to test out of – most the first year, a good deal of the second year, and even a couple of the third year – and the things Cornell may have tolerated but Starfleet certainly wouldn't. Jim hadn't paid much attention to any of it. He knew he should have, but couldn't make himself do much more than agree with whatever three year plan Pike had laid out for him.

The moment the meeting was over, he'd found McCoy and together they found a place that sold cheap booze before returning to the dorm room they were sharing in Nichols Hall until the semester began and bemoaning their stupidity for starting the Academy now, surrounded by so many young, naïve, uniformed idiots. And if McCoy wondered what he was drinking to forget, the doctor was good enough not to mention it.

He'd still dreamt of Tarsus, though.

_("Therefore I have no alternative but to sentence you to death.")_

He'd never be free of it.

* * *

a/n: I'm still not quite happy with the last bit of this chapter, but I think it's as good as it's going to get. The quotes here, obviously, aren't from the movie but rather the TOS episode "The Conscius of the King." They never give a lot of details on what exactly went down at Tarsus, though, so those are mine. And, remember, reviews make these things better.


	3. Ellington Hall

_Chapter Three: Ellington Hall_

* * *

Jim Kirk did not do things halfway.

_("So help me God.")_

No, he either threw himself entirely into a project or ignored it so completely that it became difficult for even objective observers to determine whether or not the forgotten project had ever actually existed in the first place. His enlistment in Starfleet was quickly becoming the former, despite the fact – as McCoy (who, after a second comment about his bones during an intensive scientific comparison of whiskey and bourbon on their third night in Nichols Hall, had been quickly rechristened _Bones_) had no-so-helpfully pointed out – that they wouldn't technically be enlisted until this afternoon, when they and flood of new cadets who'd descended on the campus for R-Day would take the Oath of Enlistment. Up until that point, Bones had said, they were free to walk away.

Considering that Bones had nothing to his name but his _medicin__æ__ doctor_ and the clothes he'd worn on the shuttle, Jim had said nothing. Well, actually had told him, "You're not getting away from me that easily, Bones," and borne through a fifteen minute rant on how his name was McCoy – _Leonard _even – but _not_ Bones. It was amusing but, by the time Bones was done, the doctor seemed to realize that Jim was already in this whole hog and left in disgust to meet his advisor, muttering all the while about _kids looking to get themselves killed_.

Still, Jim's enthusiasm for his new endeavour was approaching the manic by the time R-Day – Reception Day, the first day of the new semester, when the two thousand odd cadets enrolling this semester would be in-processed en mass in their first taste of Starfleet life – arrived. He'd spent the better part of the four days between his arrival on campus and the start of the semester finagling his course schedule so that he'd graduate in three years – which, given the number of classes he'd tested out of, was only hampered by the fact that that that remained had pre- and co-requisites that even he could no so easily get out of, leaving him with healthy, but not overly intense, course load.

Not being the type to take boredom well, as soon as he'd gotten out of as many classes as possible and into as many as the instructors would allow, he'd gone across the bay to Berkeley and managed to apply, be granted admission, and enrolled in their graduate informatics program in a period of less than twelve hours. Cheryl, his Cornell advisor, would have called this feat of impossibility _the classic Kirk charm_. Frank would have called it _the classic Kirk stubbornness_. Sydney, from the Riverside Shipyards, would have said it was just another way that his existence violated logic and, quite possibly, a few of the fundamental laws of physics. Jim classified the whole thing as one of those things he just didn't think about and, accordingly, told Bones when he'd asked where the hell he'd been all day that he'd been out the casing bars on Baker Street.

_("I, James Tiberius Kirk...")_

He didn't know why he lied. The doctor might even have been supportive of his decision to go for a second Ph.D. Not that the doctor knew about the first. Or that he'd been to college at all. Or would really care if he had or hadn't – Bones was sorta like that. In fact, Jim was fairly certain that Bones didn't give a shit about who he was. Which was nice. The idea of telling him the truth... well, that would be undermining everything. He _liked_ that Bones didn't know, that, to him, he was _just Jim Kirk_ and Bones didn't want him to be anything else.

Jim rather likes Bones.

They'd only known each other five days. But five nights of progressively more expensive booze and take-out can teach you things about a person, so he doesn't feel all too guilty about hacking into the Academy mainframe and making sure than he and Bones get permanent dorm assignments together. He's even made sure that the room their assigned is one of the less spectacular ones, so no one can say that he used his powers for evil, if they even notice.

_("...do solemnly swear...")_

It's R-Day at last, though, and Jim finds himself sitting on the floor of the bathroom his temporary dorm shares with the (luckily empty) room next door at two thirty-eight in the morning, woken by a curious mixture of excitement and mild nausea, the likes of which he's not felt possibly ever. There's a mantra running through his head _not dad not dad not dad_ and some fanciful ideas about possible future postings that's keeping him from sleeping, so, after a while, he climbs off the floor, pads back into the bedroom, and grabs his padd before returning back to the nest he's made himself on the bathroom floor and starts reading the textbook for his scalable distributed consistency course at Berkeley.

Six in the morning couldn't come fast enough – not that he doesn't find the subject interesting. He does, which is why he's going for the second doctorate rather than, say, filling up his schedule with biology or engineering classes offered at the Academy, or coasting on a slightly less than full load – and, when it does, he grabs his things and, as loudly as possible, returns to the bedroom. When noise fails to wake his roommate, he tries the lights and, when that too doesn't work, he settles for being petulant, knowing that he's good at it, and and shakes Bones awake.

Head still buried in his pillow, "Are you bleeding to death?"

"No."

"Dying of some wasting disease?"

"No."

"Then why are you trying to wake me up at some God-awful hour of the morning without a damn good reason?"

"Who says I _don't_ have a damn good reason?" Jim grinned, trying not to sound overly amused.

"What _possible_ reason could you have for this torture other than an undiagnosed streak of sadism?"

"The other new cadets start to arrive on campus in two hours, and traffic is going to be terrible, even if we manage to catch a bus. So we'll have to walk to Ellington and, if you wanna be able to grab something at the mess first, we'll have to leave soon."

Groaning but pulling himself into a sitting position, "I thought we didn't need to show up til this afternoon."

"We don't. But we're going anyway."

"Why?"

"Because we need to make a good impression."

"On who? Some snot-nosed eighteen-year-olds with criminal idiocy?"

"No," Kirk says with great exasperation, tugging back Bones' covers and nearly pulling the man out of bed. "All the pleb advisers will be there, supervising the in-processing. And just think what a great impression it'll make if we two – who have already been through this mess – are there to help shepherd the young idiots through the process, and point them in the direction of the mess and their new dorms and their advisers' offices."

"And _why_ do you want to do this?"

"Duty. Honour. The goodness of our hearts. And because, at the end of the first semester, the pleb advisers get together and choose who the pleb officers-in-charge will be for each dorm. And those who become pleb OIC are more likely to remain cadet OIC during their Academy days, and cadets with shiny badges like that on their records get better assignments after graduation-"

_("...that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United Federation of Planets...")_

Bones, naturally, gave in, and an hour forty-five minutes later Jim was dragging him into Ellington Hall and up to the same pimply-faced petty officer that had in-processed them on Thursday, asking oh-so-very earnestly if there was anything they could do to help. Which is how they ended up manning one of the tables towards the middle of the Reception Battalion, Jim at a table with a pile of padds and checking paperwork and room assignments and a whole host of other crazy boring things and Bones doing basically the same, but with the medical stuff.

Jim actually has a bit of fun, talking and joking and flirting with all who came to his table, and even gets Bones to enjoy himself for a while. It's not the sort of thing he normally does – he got his teaching credits at Cornell for both his masters and his doctorate by proctoring half-a-dozen online courses – but his crazy ideas about future postings solidified once he remembered the beautiful new Constitution-class at Riverside. According to Fleet Ops, it's supposed to launch officially in June of '58 and Pike's slated to be it's captain after he finishes his tour at the recruiting department. If anyone's going to let him be the man he needs to be to get away from Dad's memory, it's Pike, so between that and the VI they're putting into her, _Enterprise_ is the ship he needs to get on. Which means he needs to be in the top of his class. He knows he'll never make Cadet Corps Captain, not with his record, but getting as close to it as possible ensures him his ship and the only future he can bear.

Cadet Corps Captains do things like this though, so Jim's doing it.

Pike, who's technically running this rodeo, finds him while he's inspecting the goings-on and gives him this look, this surprised and slightly smug look, that Jim has never seen before. It's not the one people give him when he's done something George Kirk would have done – the look that Mom used to give him before she died, when she was planet-side for a while and she'd suddenly go quiet and say, "You look so much like your dad," in that sad, tender way she always used when she talked of Dad – or when he'd done something that George most certainly wouldn't – the one that some of the guys at the Riverside Shipyards, the local ones who'd gone to grammar school with Dad and the one or who who'd gone to the Academy with him, had perfected down to an art, with just the right mixture of disappointment and sadness and regret that would inevitability send him running back to Ithaca afterwards, without giving Sydney notice or Frank a note. The closest thing he'd seen to it was Cheryl, a smile deepening the wrinkles on her aged face, after she'd finished his B Exam. Jim doesn't know quite what to call it.

_("...against all enemies, foreign and domestic...")_

Pike's still wearing his own version of Cheryl's smile – small, slightly slanted, but the emotion's the same, whatever the hell it is – when he walks up to Jim's table, though it crooks some more when he returns Jim's salute. "And to what do we owe this pleasure, Cadet Kirk?"

"I don't do boredom well," he gives by way of explanation, which has the virtue of being partially true.

"Somehow that fails to surprise me. Though I don't suppose you've taken the time to read your own introductory packet yet."

"Nah." Jim gestures at the stack of padds in front of him. "They stagger the arrivals by ident-number and mine hasn't come up yet. 'Sides, I'm not even sure if they put together one for me, being a last minute arrival and all that. But I've read the reg book and all that, if that's what you're asking. You should be proud," he says wryly, "I've not gotten arrested once since I've been here."

"I appreciate your discretion," Pike says in the same light tone. "I realize how hard that must be for you. Though I'd be surprised if even you can manage to find time between your classes here and at Berkeley to get arrested."

Wincing – 'cause he'd honestly been hoping to keep the informatics degree from Pike, at least for a while, in case it did turn out to be too much for him, and 'cause it would give the guy another reason to force him into doing post-doc programming for the 'Fleet, though the captain seemed to want him in the field, not a computer lab, - he recovered quickly. "You'd be surprised how much of my dissertation was written in bars. Or behind them. Surprised they called you, though."

The earlier look is mostly gone now. "They knew you were a cadet and called me looking for your advisor, to make sure we'd green-lighted it on this end."

"And, let me guess, this is you telling me you didn't – green-light it, that is."

"No, this is me telling you, as your advisor, not to get in over your head. There's leaping without looking, and then there's stupidity. You think you can handle it, fine, but don't let it interfere with your course-work here."

Jim only heard two words out of this. "You're my adviser? I thought the head of a big department like recruiting wouldn't have to take advisees – or is this part of the Academy purgatory all officers have to go through if they ever want a chance at making admiral?"

"I make exceptions for exceptional cases."

By which Jim was certain he meant the Academy Board, for all they might want him holed up in R&D, doing something incredibly dull, still thought of him as _Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory _and, thusly, in need of babysitting and possibly compulsory AA attendance. He considered offering a comment about drinking for the easy calories rather than the alcohol, but comments like that, he'd long learned, made people a little too curious for Jim's own good.

_("...that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...")_

Pike, luckily, didn't seem inclined to linger, and departed with the shot that all his advisees had to come to Sunday dinner, and so to meet him at the corner of Lyon and Broadway at 1830 this weekend, leaving Jim no time to dissemble. He's met people who think they can change him – make him into _Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare_, who wasn't the drunk ne'er-do-well that _Jim, who was such a failure _was – before and had rather hoped that Pike wouldn't turn into one of them. It didn't matter that Jim was embracing the captain's _I dare you to do better_ challenge, or that Jim was trying to make himself at least look like the type of clean-cut, second-generation Starfleet cadet that the brass would choose to post on _Enterprise_. He suppose it was the principle of the matter, not that he was all to clear on what that was himself.

In fact, the only thing he's clear on is that, somehow, Starfleet will let him become something other than _Jim Kirk, George's son_. That's why he's putting up with the uniforms and the dorms and everything when he could be back at Riverside, working on that beautiful ship-

-and this was going to get him on that beautiful ship, with it's amazing computer. So, no matter what Pike said, he wasn't _really_ abandoning everything he'd studied the last seven years for. Space was big. He'd have plenty of time to fool around with computer programs and such – after he finished the Academy. Command track would be almost as interesting as _Enterprise_'s VI, especially since tactical training was a big part of command and what were viruses and firewalls and hacking but tactics and strategy?

_("...and that I will obey the orders of the President of the Federation of Planets...")_

He knows it sounds like he's trying to convince someone he'll be happy, even to himself, but, luckily for him, he gave up trying to be happy long ago. This isn't about happiness, this is _survival_, pure and simple, and that he's good at. He should be, by now. His life is practically a worst-case scenario guidebook, and, if it's become his habit to find the exits before entering a room, well so be it. There are worse habits to have, and his is more likely to safe his life than end it. And if he's been eyeing the everyone who comes close to his little corner of the hall a little too closely, it's only 'cause most of them are on the easy side of easy-on-the-eyes.

Nevermind he knows that beauty is only a tool, to be used when hyperspanners and code fail.

So he smiles and flirts and jokes with each and every cadet who passes his table, 'cause nobody asks someone whose all smiles and flirtations why he practically lives in bars, or why he's on the loosing end of so many bar fights when he's tested into the mastery hand-to-hand course at the Academy, or why he's so bent and shattered and broken. And if he's all the while thinking of ways to get out of Sunday dinner, well, that's just another one of his habits that won't hurt anybody, especially him.

_("...and the orders of the officers appointed over me...")_

Bones has found out about the room assignments when he comes to drag Jim away to lunch – bitching about the cadets he's had to deal with who have somehow failed to get standard immunizations and not at all about the fact that the pair of them will be rooming together for the foreseeable future. He also says something about only Jim being able to get so wrapped up in _cadet in-processing_ that he'd forget to eat, 'cause, though they've only known each other five days, Bones knows enough about him to know that Jim physically _can't_ do anything halfway.

_("...according to regulations and the Starfleet Code.")_

And if, when they're herded with the rest of new cadets into the assembly hall (only after being stopped half-a-dozen times for information by new plebs who already know that _Jim Kirk and Bones know shit_, which was Jim's intention in the first place) after lunch to take the Oath of Enlistment, Jim's smile is plastic and mirrors despite his obsession, Bones doesn't say a word.

_("So help me God.")_

Bones, after all, knows what it's like to have no other options.

* * *

a/n: So, a little different then the first two chappies - more dialogue, for one - but, for the most part, I'm happy with this one. The quotes in this aren't from Trek, but a ST-friendly version of the Oath of Enlistment today's military takes. Things should start picking up, pace wise, in the next two or three chapters. Just kinda need to get the intial intro stuff out of the way. Anyway, please reveiw and all that...


	4. Sato Centre

_Chapter Four: Sato Centre for Languages_

* * *

Uhura's horrified expression almost makes it worth it.

_(__"It's important to be heroic..."__)_

Almost.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she hisses as he slides into the seat behind her.

Jim's smile – which, even he'll admit, is one of his cockiest, because, if he's pretending to be _Jim, who drinks too much and thinks too little and somehow will end up the best damn officer Starfleet ever saw, if he doesn't get himself killed on his first shakedown mission,_ he's not eyeing the windows to see if they've been nailed/painted/force-fielded shut or sizing up his classmates for potential threats – grows wider as her look of righteous indignation deepens. "Well, it was either this or Vulcan, and I'm not nearly masochistic enough to do that to myself."

He feels claustrophobic in his red. They're too starched, too perfect, too bright for him to really be comfortable. The Starfleet emblem is glinting on his collar and – because the quartermaster's aunt was on the _Kelvin_ – there's a black-banded service pin on the inside of the jacket next to one one that shows his cadet corps company. He'd have left it off entirely if he hadn't repressed the entire memory of the quartermaster's one-sided conversation, and, as such, was left to suffer through the additional weight, which felt heavier than anything that small ought.

"But this is _Intermediate_ Andorian,"she insisted.

"_Is_ it? Fancy that."

"Basics is down the hall, Farm Boy, in the auditorium."

"The name's still Jim. Now that I've joined up, are you going to tell me your first name?"

Rolling her eyes, "I don't know how you managed to get accepted into the Academy so quickly, but, unless you want to go back to Iowa, you might want to get going. Lieutenant Commander Sheldon teaches the introductory class and she's liable to kick you out of the class if you're not-"

"Your concern for my well-being is touching," Jim places both hands over his heart for a moment, then, unable to stand the uniformity any longer, unzips his jacket just far enough that he no longer feels like he's about to choke on the sea of red, "Does this mean you're willing to take me up on that drink too?"

"Hardly. But no one, not even you, deserves Riverside, Iowa."

"It's not so bad – if you happens to like corn."

"Or-"

Jim is dead certain she's going to say _or sex with farm animals_, but never does find out 'cause right then the professor enters the room and, since he's their senior officer – a commander, who, by the looks of him, is doing this as a precursor to retirement rather then promotion – as well as their teacher, they have to stand when he enters the room. The whole ordeal makes him feel all of about five years old – or, worse, thirteen, on Tarsus, where the governor liked them to snap to attention whenever he passed – and, in the shuffle of desks and polished shoes, the thread of their conversation is lost.

But this is it.

_("...ambitious...")_

His first class as a Starfleet cadet.

_("...productive...")_

He hopes this is damn-well worth it.

_("...efficient...")_

Especially when the commander, rather than ignoring Jim like he'd rather hoped, does that pause thing when he sees Jim's name on the roster – he knows it's his name 'cause a moment later the commander looks up and zeroes in on him. "James Kirk?"

Uhura gives him a smug _I told you so_ look.

But Jim knows that tone, that look. He's intimately familiar with the questioning lilt to his name and the slight traces of disbelief and wonderment in it. "Yes sir?"

"George Kirk's son?"

He's not looking at the commander – well, he _is_, but he's not actually _seeing _the man at the front of the room despite the fact he knows their eyes have met, just as he's not seeing all the eyes that he _feels_ trained on him, and, damn it all, if it isn't exactly what he's been trying to avoid _his whole damn life _and it's only the fact that the _Jim Kirk, who will somehow end up the best damn officer Starfleet ever saw_ isn't going to be phased by anything that he keeps from giving into his desire to scream – when he answers, "Yes sir."

"Good man, your father," the commander continues and, luckily, leaves it at that before launching into the usual first day of class shit Jim learned to drown out sometime around the third grade.

_("...creative...")_

But the damage has already been done and he can _feel_ the whispers of _Jim Kirk, George's son_ following him. The mere _thought_ of it causes his blood pressure to rise and his fingers to clench into fists.

Granted, he'd known this was coming. The whispers. The looks. The occasional officer coming up to him and thanking him for his father's sacrifice (why are they thanking _him?_ _Jim_ had nothing to do with it, he was being _born_ as Dad was hurtling his ship into the Romulan vessel; he would have liked to _know_ the man they all praise so emphatically, to know him as something more than the weight of expectation on his shoulders). It's happened all before. Ithaca. Riverside. Mom's funeral. Nameless gas stations. Tarsus.

It's somehow different, though, when he's in uniform too. Worse than he'd expected, 'cause, Before (he's capitalizing it now) he was just _Jim, who was such a disappointment_. Now he's _Jim, who's following in his father's footsteps_ and that Jim, no matter how much he wants, can not compare. It'll take a lifetime to do better than eight hundred lives in twelve minutes.

All of it makes his fingers itch for a bottle, or, at the least, a good fight.

_("...and progressive...")_

His crazy schedule doesn't leave him time to sneak off campus, though, and he doesn't have any alcohol on his person, so he has to go through the day stone-cold sober. Luckily, though, his class right after Intermediate Andorian is in a massive auditorium, so the whispering isn't so bad there. He has Tactical Operations – a fancy name for what's really an intro to ship's systems course – at noon, and that class is smaller, with another teacher who knows his name and recognizes its importance, but his classmates there are all plebes like him and too new to the whole 'Fleet experience to connect the dots. His last two classes of the day are in auditoriums as well, so he is mostly able to avoid the whispers, but it doesn't help. Jim doesn't have to hear the rumourmongers to know they're there.

It takes all his willpower to make it back to his dorm without loosing it, forgoing the mess despite not having time for lunch – he's gone longer without and it'll take more than a day to make him notice his hunger. The moment the door closes behind him, he goes for the stash he and Bones have already secreted away – because who cares if cadets aren't supposed to have alcohol on campus, booze was the only way that he and Bones were going to make it through three years of being surrounded by _snot-nosed eighteen-year-olds with criminal idiocy – _in the closet.

_("...but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul.")_

He pulls off his jacket and drops it thoughtlessly onto the floor, pausing only long enough to pull his padd out of the breast pocket; it ends up in the closet only by virtue of lucky accident, kicked inside as he goes for the drinks within. Grabbing the first bottle he can find, Jim twists off the cap and downs a good quarter of it before he's made it to his bed. He doesn't taste it, doesn't know what it is he's drinking, just falls back and and does his best to do forget every whisper of _Jim, who only got in because his dad was some kind of hero _and _Jim, who only got in because Captain Pike bent the rules for him_ and _Jim, who will always and ever be such a complete fuck-up that he doesn't deserve the name Kirk _and every other fucking thing the snot-nosed kids ever said, though he knows well-enough that half the things he's trying to forget were only ever in his head.

_("The soul has different concerns, of equal value...")_

He feels so old, so very old. Sometimes it surprises him, remembering he's only twenty-two. So god-damn old, twenty-two. He's already accomplished more than anyone can really expect anyone his age to do, but it's not enough, _it will never be enough_, to outshine his dead father. So what he's more degrees than either of his parents combined, and is going for a few more that would put him ahead of Mom, Dad, _and_ their parents? That means nothing when the only thing people can think of when they hear his name is the _Kelvin. _

One of these days, he'll have to do the exact math, figure out how many lives he'll need to save to outshine his dad and not become a martyr, but he has the sneaking suspicion that that number is far in excess of the population of any Federation planet. The thought depresses him further, 'cause he really doesn't want to die. He's gone to too much trouble over the years to keep himself alive.

_("...downtime for reflection...")_

He takes another swig, then another, throwing an arm over his face to block out the fading evening light filtering through the window behind him. He decides the bottle probably contains scotch but can't be sure, the stuff's so cheap and can't bring himself to actually check, just lays there, finishing the bottle and trying not to think because thinking about the fact that he'd have to put up with this shit for three more years only makes him want to drink more, and Jim knows that there's not a enough alcohol in his closet to get him as numb as he'll need to be to truly forget. The only thing limiting him to this one bottle was the fact that, to get more booze, he'd have to leave campus and, since his roommate was no where to be found, he was entirely without means to stop himself if he left this room from drinking until he did something stupid enough to justify the getting the police – or, worse, Pike – called on him.

Where _was_ Bones anyway? There was no sign the doctor had been in their dorm since this morning, which was odd since Jim highly doubted Bones had a schedule as packed as his, which, on any other day but today, would have kept him from having time to think, let alone pop back to their room between classes. And, since Jim's last class ends at seventeen hundred, Bones should have been back by now.

Unless he had a late class and stopped at the mess after... which kind of put a damper on his nascent idea of _Bones, beer, and Chinese take-out,_ but he'd yet to meet anyone who the amount of drinking he was prepared to do didn't make peckish, so that part was still on the agenda. If he could find Bones first. Bones was necessary. He was a limiting factor, a safety net – he'd only known the man a week and already the doctor had gone more mother-hen on him than Mom ever had, asking if he'd ate and telling him to _stop fucking around and go to sleep already_ and, generally, telling him not to be an idiot, which was nice. He'd had people who'd cared for him before, of course, but none of them were content to let him settle for average. It was always _Jim, why can't you do better_ with them.

But not with Bones.

Or, at least, not that he thought with Bones. He _had_ only known the guy a week. He had thought that they two were the only sane ones at the Academy, who didn't believe the universe was rainbows and butterflies and pixie dust, but maybe the guy had found some people at Starfleet Medical to were less broken then Jim to hang out with.

Or maybe he was just at the mess.

Or maybe he was working. Hadn't he said something about being forced to take shifts at the hospital as well as classes? Jim supposed he could hack into the Academy mainframe and find out, but, in a way, he really didn't want to know, especially if he wasn't scheduled to work.

Or maybe he was just an idiot. If a self-admitted misanthrope with the bedside manner of a short-tempered chimpanzee (also self-admitted; Jim hadn't done anything stupid enough to warrant the doctor's services) could find something better to do on the first night of classes than hang out in his too small and far from recently renovated dorm with his clearly mental roommate, then Jim _was_ an idiot.

Well, it wasn't like he couldn't find other people – exciting people – to spend time with himself. If he wanted. Which he didn't. Until the insanity over his being _Jim Kirk, George's son_ died down, his classmates were all resigned to the _idiots_ category, and Jim, as a rule, ignored idiots. Or got into bar fights with them. Which he couldn't, because he couldn't go into a bar right now because, if he did, he could lose out on the _Enterprise. _And he couldn't lose _Enterprise._

_("...conversation...")_

Well, fuck Bones anyway. It wasn't like they'd made plans or talked about meeting up after classes or anything. He'd no right to be disappointed the doctor hadn't shown, especially when it was his own lack of self-control at fault.

_("...and reverie...")_

He finished the scotch. For a moment he couldn't decide whether to throw it (because _Jim, who only got in because his dad was some kind of hero_ did stupid things like that; because _Jim, who only got in because Captain Pike bent the rules for him_ was a repeat-offender with no respect for anyone or anything; because _Jim, who will always and ever be such a complete fuck-up that he doesn't deserve the name Kirk_ liked broken glass and cut-up hands and burning blood that at least reminded him he was alive) or not and dangled the bottle absently. Eventually it slipped to the floor, unnoticed as the hours passed.

He doesn't sleep. Sleep brings memories and Jim has very few decent ones. Eventually, he rolls onto his stomach, picks up his discarded padd, and begins to trudge through what homework he's already been assigned. None of it's really interesting because, after all, it's the _first fucking week of class_ and, as a rule, nothing ever is going to be assigned that's interesting that early on.

It doesn't capture his attention for long, though, and his thoughts start to drift once more.

_("...beauty that is captivating and pleasuring...")_

It's at times like this he hates his dad.

_("...relatedness to the environs and to people...")_

He knows, deep down, that he'll never be able to shake the whispers. He'll always been _Jim Kirk, George's son_ no matter what he does, no matter how many he saves. He knows, deep down, that nothing and no one will ever be able to change that. No matter how big of a hero he might ever become. After all, he survived Tarsus, that should prove he's more than just his father's son...

Living was more than Dad ever managed...

Not that Jim would quite call this living. What Jim has is some sort of holding pattern, unable to change or progress until something – the something he's been waiting for his whole life, though he cannot name or describe or even guess at its nature – happens...

_("...and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.")_

It's past midnight when he finally drifts to sleep. It's still dark when he wakes a handful of hours later. Bones is still gone. Jim tells himself it doesn't bother him as much as it does. He's been abandoned his whole life; he shouldn't be surprised it's happened again.

_(__"It's important to be heroic..."__)_

Cadets out to be heroes shouldn't need anyone anyway.

* * *

a/n: Once again, the last bit of this was insanely difficult to write. Don't ask me why. Anyway, the quote comes from Thomas More - some book called _The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life_. Silly me, when I was flipping through my collection of quotes, I thought at first it was by Thomas More, the saint and author of _Utopia_ (a good read; I recommend it), and then when I went to google just where exactly it was from, turns out there's this self-help book guy with the same name and it's _him _that's actually responsible for the quote. Needless to say, I'm kinda annoyed, but it worked.

As always, though, I love what reveiws I've gotten and try to respond to every (signed) one I get. (hint, hint, hint)


	5. Roslin Practice Fields

_Chapter Five: __Roslin Practice Fields _

* * *

He feels alive for the first time in weeks.

_("The world breaks everyone...)_

He's in his element, because his mastery hand-to-hand class is _serious shit _and the instructor doesn't believe in long lectures or instructions or, apparently, classrooms at all. The professor – a thirty-something lieutenant commander with a nose that's been broken more than once and protuberant eyes – simply directs them to the practice fields in front of the building and, after securing a patch of trampled grass near the road, gestures at two of Jim's classmates.

They must have had this instructor before as, at this silent instruction, both men shed their uniform jackets, stepped into the makeshift ring, and began to fight. It lasted for almost ten minutes before the taller of the two combatants won out, having captured his opponent in an effective, if not very original, headlock. Only then did the teacher speak, his voice surprisingly soft as he spent the better part of the next half-hour breaking down the fight and telling the class what they could have done better.

The class was fairly small – this was the fourth level of hand-to-hand that the Academy offered and only the security track was really required to go beyond the Intro to Not Getting Yourself Killed class that had a far more socially acceptable name that Jim couldn't be bothered to remember this early in the morning, - only a dozen or so people, and so it's really no surprise that the other students are all eyeing him strangely. After all, they're all _firsties_, which is, apparently, what military universities call their seniors, and are understandably curious how a plebe like him got into the class, especially when he seems to be their age.

The instructor – Lt. Commander Hutchins – appeared to tire of his students' attention being elsewhere after the second bout, and called out Jim and a dark-haired cadet whose jacket marked him as a cadet corps commander for the third.

The guy clearly thinks Jim's going to be an easy win and, at first, he doesn't do anything to change the guy's mind. Being underestimated by one's opponent is the surest way to success in Jim's book and, in that respect, a round in a classroom is no different than a free-for-all in an Iowa bar. He tests the guy first – partly to see what the firstie will do, partly because he's _Jim, who never met a fight he didn't like _and the adrenaline's making him feel for the first time since this whole thing began that this Starfleet thing isn't a huge mistake, – but only long enough to notice his opponent doesn't protect his face as well as he should. First chance he gets, he goes down low and executes a _martelo-do-chão_ that catches the guy completely off guard, allowing Jim to pin him to the grass while he's too dazed to fight back.

"My instructor," he explains to Hutchins as he helps his opponent up, "was _capoeira_ enthusiast. He liked to try to incorporate pieces of it into more traditional styles." Adão had never been very successful in this venture, but such moves tended to surprise people and surprise was, like now, sometimes enough to win fights.

"He wasn't Starfleet, this _sensei_ of yours, was he?"

Dusting himself off, he thinks back to Adão, who'd been the head of Kodos' palace guard. An afro-Brazilian man whose hair had gone silver by the time Jim knew him, though he couldn't have been much more than thirty at the time, Adão had been a man of few words and extreme beliefs. The way he'd gone in with the governor's radical ideas had always made Jim think that the two had known each other for a long time and, to the best of his knowledge, Kodos had never been to the Academy or, indeed, spent much time on Earth.

Adão had been responsible for the military-side of the training Kodos had forced upon his little _Hitler-Jugend_. Bare fists, phaser rifles, knives (Adão'd _really_ liked knives), cudgels: name it, Adão had taught it them how to use it. They had to be _stronger, smarter, faster_ than anyone else out there. The governor hadn't exactly been trying to create Augments – even Kodos hadn't been crazy enough to try his hand at genetic manipulation, – but he'd been willing to cull the population to ensure only _the best_ remained.

Idly, Jim brushed his hand against one of the scars he'd gotten the last time he'd not been strong enough, from the last time he'd fought Adão as a _camarada_. It had never healed properly, as he'd been arrested for attempting to hack into the subspace communications terminal the next morning and thrown in to Kodos' dungeons for the better part of a month for it... Afterwards, at Cornell's 'Fleet hospital, they'd done their best with the dermal regenerator, but there was only so much that they could do after so much time had passed...

Adão had been in charge of Kodos' dungeons as well.

Not that he really let himself think about that either.

_("...and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.)_

"No sir," he tells Hutchins before the silence becomes too long, veins still singing with too much adrenaline for the memory of those whips and chains to really take hold, "not that I know of."

Lt. Commander Hutchins simply _hmms_ and tells him to go back into the ring, setting him up against a stocky firstie this time around and hunkering down to watch the fight. He wins this round too, though it takes longer 'cause he's already tired from the first bout and the guy probably had a good fifteen kilos on him. Only then does the instructor do the what-went-wrong spiel like he had for the other fights. Jim is tired and sweaty by the end of it, and sore in more places than he can easily imagine but, God, does he actually feel like he _accomplished_ something.

And not once did he hear anyone say anything about _Jim Kirk, George's boy_ or repeat-offenders.

_("But those that will not break it kills.")_

He probably should eat after the class – it's eight to noon and he's not eaten since, oh, dinner the night before last, and even then that was only a bottle of Dos Equis and some really disappointing Tellar take-out from a place on Union Street – but the same adrenaline that had kept _that place_ at bay kept him from from really being hungry now. Well, that the fact that any mess he walked into was bound to be full of people who thought him only _Jim, who's dad was a hero but who's such a screw up that he has to be fucking someone high up to have gotten in the Academy at all_. He really couldn't take that right now.

He found a tree on the nearby quad instead, sprawled under it, and pulled out his padd instead. Reading about S. R. Ranganathan and his five laws during his lunch hour mightn't be something he'd admit to, even if the questioner had known about the informatics degree, but it was interesting and had absolutely nothing to do with the _Kelvin_, his parents, or Starfleet, and that was all he could really ask for.

Well, if he'd had it his way, Dad wouldn't have gotten himself blown to bits on the _Kelvin_, Mom and two dozen others wouldn't have gotten rad poisoning from the strange rays the Romulan ship was giving off, and he wouldn't be in the Academy right now, reading _The Principles of Information Science _on the quad. But that wasn't the point. Which was (if Jim remembered correctly; he'd a hard time keeping track of the reasons why he was putting up with this shit, even if the hand-to-hand class _had_ been pretty awesome) that life sucked, had always sucked, and would continue to suck for the indefinite future. He was _Jim, who must have been a baby-eating, planet-razing, cattle-thief of a Klingon in a past life to have this kind of karma_ after all.

But whatever. He could deal. What didn't kill him would make him stronger and all that.

Just like he wouldn't let it bother him that Bones, the one other person on campus who appeared to be sane – or, at least, less crazy than some of the idiots who had joined because they had a desire to serve or see the universe rather than because they'd no where else in the 'verse to go, which is the only reason to join an outfit where the probability of dying an exceptionally violent and oft pointless death was as high as it was, – had disappeared on him. There was nothing in the Starfleet Code that said roommates had to hang out together or even talk to one another, and, if the good doctor didn't want to tell Jim where he was going, well, it wasn't the end of the world. Just bad manners.

Just like the message he carefully crafted to Pike when he was taking a break between chapters, admitting that, yes, he'd probably bitten off more than he could chew; no, he didn't need to drop any of his classes, he just was going to need every free second this weekend to work on stuff for class; and, sorry, but he'd have to miss their little advisor-advisee dinner thing on Sunday.

Not that he actually felt overworked. Considering what he'd spent the last four years doing, classes here were rather easy, but Pike didn't have to know that, so long as he got out of the stupid dinner. _Jim, who never backed down from anything in his life _didn't need any special favours from anyone.

Especially not when that guy probably read his file from cover to cover by now. That would just be weird, sitting down to dinner with someone who knew that much about him.

Very weird.

_("It kills the very good...")_

Still, his sense of accomplishment lasted only halfway into his next and final class of the day. This one was a dull as dirt introduction to the use of phase weapons and, as could be expected, it was nothing but a long and dusty lecture on how phasers weren't toys. He could have even stood that (or, at least, passed the time gracefully by flirting with one of the TAs) if it hadn't been for the instructor, who just so happened to have been a junior security something-or-other on the _Kelvin_'s final flight, so he was forced to put up with _that_ for a good ten minutes before class could actually begin, and, so help him God, it takes his best _Jim, who doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything_ to make it through two hours of that hell.

Somewhere towards the middle of the lecture, he finds himself thinking about the much more interesting introduction to phase weapons Adão had given Laura and Nalhin and Sara and him on Tarsus, which leads him back to his earlier thought of _Adão ran the dungeons_ and, briefly, to the idea he'd rather be _back there_ then have to deal with being _Jim Kirk, George's son _here, 'cause at least there he'd been _Jim, the governor's protégé_ and _Jim, who saved those kids _and _Jim, who Kodos was only keeping alive as an example for the others, to be dragged out every seventh day so that those he'd deemed fit enough to live would never think to cross him _and nobody, not even Kodos, had cared who his fucking father was.

It was all that Jim could do not to bolt out of class, 'cause by that point the adrenaline was long gone and, though Jim could repress _anything _given enough time, he'd been given one too many causes to remember over the last week for even his powers of repression to work. The moment it's over, though, he makes for his dorm, with every step talking himself out of finding the nearest bar and getting so piss-drunk that he couldn't remember his name, let alone why anyone would want to.

_Enterprise_, he tells himself; VIs he can mess around with during the long, dull parts of space travel, and a chance to be something more than _Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory. _

The mantra was only barely strong enough yesterday, though, and today it's just enough to drag him through the doors of Stafford Hall and up the stairs to the fourth floor. He smiles, all plastic and mirrors, at some of the cadets he passes on way, and might even have flirted with a couple, though, honestly, his mind is off the hook at the moment and its amazing he made it back to the right dorm at all. There's alcohol in the room, though, and tomorrow's Friday, so he can go out after classes and get wasted without anyone asking too many questions. And, he tells himself, if it's still too much on Monday, he can always quit...

..and be condemned to being _Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare _for the rest of his life...

...which means its not a choice at all, 'cause Jim knows he's wild and broken and that the only thing tethering him down at all during the last seven years has been the steady progression _bachelor's master's doctorate_ he'd taken up not so much for a reason but because he'd fallen, bored, into it and he'd been unable to force himself to actually face the fact that he'd would forever and always be _Jim Kirk, George's son_, _the poor _Kelvin_ baby, whose mother died._ Maybe Jim's just becoming melodramatic as he probes the dark abyss that is his life, but either way, Pike saved him that night in the bar and his only choice is to trudge on, ignoring the whispers and learning to stop the memories anew, or else give in to to the pain and...

Jim doesn't like to think of all the things he would probably have done by now if he didn't have Ithaca and Riverside and all the bars in between to occupy his time.

_("...and the very gentle...")_

He punches his code into the door and feels his heart stop as he almost collides with the figure on the other side, who is currently trying to shrug off the blue smock Starfleet Medical personnel wear and not doing such a good job of it.

"Bones!" he exclaims once he recovers, stepping into the room, thumbing the door closed, and giving the doctor's uniform a quick yank, so that he can see the man's face. This is great. Bones equals supervision equals a way for Jim to get as drunk as he needs to be without loosing his dream to the inevitable consequences of his own idiocy. Some of the pain has already lifted at the mere _anticipation_ of drunken oblivion. "How do you feel about a night out? My treat."

Glaring at him – they (by which he means Bones) have already had one discussion on personal boundaries, and Jim guesses that helping to disentangle a friend must count as an invasion thereof, at least in Bones' book, 'cause Bones is weird that way, - the doctor shoots down the idea with a, "I've just had the worst first day _ever_, have not slept more than an hour in the last forty-eight, and, as much as I'd love to get piss drunk on your dime, kid, I need sleep more."

Jim's not sure if the doc's being sarcastic, 'cause he's weird that way too, but assumes the worst and, heading further into the room (Bones, by now, has collapsed, face down, on his bed, still in the uniform blacks of a commissioned officer but having managed, at least, to have removed his shoes), plasters on his best _Jim, who never backed down from anything in his life _needling smile. "It'll be fun, I promise. You've not lived until you've been on a Grand Kirk Bar Crawl."

"Kid," Bones groans, face still buried in his pillow, "they're having me pull twenty-hour shifts at Starfleet Medical between classes and running me like a god-damn intern in the process."

Perhaps too keenly, "So _that's_ where you were last night? I thought you'd hit it off with some girl already," because it meant Bones _hadn't_ abandoned him, and that puts a warm feeling in his heart, despite the fact the doctor had just lifted his head just high enough to offer Jim a glare. "Not that I'd blame you, some of the cadets here are _hot_, but after some of your rants about your ex, I'd thought you'd decided that women are the devil or something, so it seemed kinda strange."

McCoy grunts something that sounds suspiciously like, "Die in a fire," but offers nothing more further.

His plastic-and-mirror smile shifting into a pout (undermined somewhat by the jittery fire in his veins telling him he needs to get drunk, _now_, before the memories overwhelm him), he draws out, "Bones," into as many syllables as possible, continuing only after another glare, "if you're _not_ going to come out with me, you could at least give me details." Details were distractions. Distractions would keep him from losing it, and buy him time to talk Bones into getting shit-faced with him.

_("...and the very brave impartially.")_

And so he gets all the details of the xenobiology classes they stuck Bones in Wednesday morning (with _idiots who don't know which way to hold their silverware, let alone an auto-suture_) and his shift at Starfleet Medical (afternoon spent convincing first his attending, then the Chief of Surgery, and finally the Dean of Medicine that he was a licensed doctor, not some _idiot intern who needs his hand held every time he has to diagnose a sneeze_; evening spent jumping through the hoops of a new fellowship until the trauma surgeon on call came down with food poisoning, at which point Bones found himself patching together _idiots who think phasers are some kind of toy_; morning spent with much the same, until he finally got off shift just in time for his immunology class this afternoon) until, too tired to continue, Bones falls asleep somewhere in the middle of his rant about _idiots who couldn't tell the difference between the chicken pox and Orion herpes if given an illustrated guide _or something along those lines,and Jim, sprawled on on his own bed, listening to the comfortable ramble, is half-asleep himself. Though it's not the miracle cure cheap booze or a bar fight is, somehow knowing that someone else's day sucked just as much as his makes Jim feel all kinds of better, which probably says something horrible about him.

_("If you are none of these...")_

He actually _sleeps_ that night, if not well, and eats double helpings at breakfast the next morning, 'cause Bones gives him this _look_ when he shrugs when asked if he was hungry, and wouldn't let him leave the mess until he'd eaten everything the doctor had put in front of him – another way Bones was weird, but he went along with it 'cause it was ultimately harmless and, besides, if the doc was going to put up with his quirks, it was the least Jim could do to return the favour.

_("...you can be sure that it will kill you too...")_

And, maybe just 'cause he's his own kind of idiot, but things actually lookbetter in the morning. Sure, the whispers are still there, and the accusations, and all the rest, but his Friday classes were the same as his Wednesday classes, so not only does everyone know the _Kelvin_ story already, but they're also past the first day of class syllabi shit and on to the actual stuff Jim's here for, like lectures on the Andorian subjunctive tenses and Sun Tzu's applicability in interplanetary warfare.

He actually starts to think he might enjoy the next three years... if he can keep the mentions of his father and memories of Tarsus far enough at bay... and Bones continues to decide not to give a fuck about his past... and Pike decides to drop the whole Sunday dinner thing. But, other than that, this whole Starfleet thing might not be so bad.

_("...but there will be no special hurry.")_

He's just thinking this when a icon flashes on his padd, telling him he has a new message. It's from Pike and all it says is, _Nice try, Kirk. You're not getting out of it that easily. _To tell the truth, Jim would have been a little disappointed if it _had_ been that easy.

_("The world breaks everyone...)_

That doesn't mean he has to like it though.

* * *

a/n: Another angsty, Tarsus-filled chapter. After the next, though, the pace should pick up some. The next is actually the plot bunny that gave me the whole idea for this story... but more on that in the next chapter. I'm also kinda sad no one seemed to get the _Sato_ in last chappie's title is a reference to _Star Trek: Enterprise_'s comm officer, Hoshi Sato, but oh well.

Anyway, the quote is from Ernest Hemingway's _A Farewell to Arms_. On an interesting side note, it's also quoted by Chris Pine's charector in the movie _Bottle Shock_, in which he plays a surprisingly similar charector (ie, intelligent, womanizing ne'er-do-well who scrapes himself together to make something of himself _and_ save the day) only set in 1970s Napa and with long hair. The long hair really makes it, but it's worth a watch. Has a whole bunch of other random famous actors in it too...

And, as always, reveiws are wanted, appreciated, and responded to (if signed).


	6. Stafford Hall

_Chapter Six: Stafford Hall_

* * *

Jim has never been so happy as to see his dorm as he is right now. And considering the week he's had, that's saying something.

_("But I suppose life has made him like that...")_

All he really wants to do is to go to sleep, maybe for three years, and possibly to forget the whole night. He groans as he shrugs out of his jacket.

"How did it go?"

Jim starts, half of out of his shoes. Sure, the lights had been on, but Bones usually isn't around, at least not during the week now that classes have started. He's starting to miss Bones' presence, which had been a constant during the week between Riverside and Reception Day. Between the two of them, they'd been able to keep each other convinced that enlisting had been their best option. After spending two hours at Pike's idea of an adviser-advisee dinner, Jim's beginning to doubt this again. He's starting to think he'll spend the rest of his life talking himself into staying in Starfleet.

"Okay, I guess," he calls back, tossing his disregarded uniform in the closet as he searches for a semi-clean pair of sweats to change into before entering the main part of the dorm. "Thought you were at the hospital or something. Don't tell me you said that just to get out of coming with me, 'cause that's just-" _mean_, that's what it is. He might be _Jim, who could talk his way out of anything _and may or may not have used this talent on various members of various law enforcement agencies in more counties than he can easily count, but Bones can be _one_ _sneaky mother-fucker_ when he wants to be; he'd have to be to have convinced the _idiots who think caution is the best course of action_ at the hospital to let him start as a fellow, not as the intern they'd wanted – a feat of impossibility to rival some of Jim's own. The idea of Bones using his powers of darkness (or whatever the hell one wanted to call them) against him sits badly with Jim for some reason.

"For one thing, I wasn't invited," the doctor snorts, entirely without compassion for Jim's plight. "For another, I'm not planning on spending all my free time catering to your insecurities. I'm a doctor, Jim, not a nursemaid."

For a moment Jim contemplated asking what the difference was between the two, but decided against it, instead walking out of the door-closet-alcove-thing – he'd yet to think of a decent word for it, but that's what it was, a narrow corridor by the door flanked by the doors to the two closets that divided the entrance to the room from the larger part that managed, barely, to hold a pair of beds and a couple of desks – and grabbing his padd on the way. Flicking it on, "Tell me you at least went out to a bar or a club or a party or _something_ while I was gone."

Waving his own padd at him, "Some of us actually want to _pass_ our classes."

"You wound me, Bones. I _am _passing my classes."

"Only because it's the first week. Even you would need at least a month to flunk out."

"Trust me, Bones. If I wanted to be kicked out, I could've managed it by now." At least eight different ways too. It was amazing he hadn't lost it on some of the people who talked about Dad like he was Starfleet's very own saint, or, at the very least, the fucking patron of pyrrhic victories or some other shit like that.

"And what," the doctor raised an eyebrow sceptically, "do you want me to do? Congratulate you?"

Pretending to think about it, he offered ingenuous, "Maybe," and a lazy smile that didn't didn't quite match his words before flopping onto his own bed. Acknowledgement of the fact would be nice, but normal human interaction – which is to say, not with idiots or captains who think they can mould him into a man like his father – is good enough. And Bones is normal, and safe, and doesn't ask questions that require deep answers, and couldn't care less if he's a genius or a delinquent or the god-damn _Kelvin_ baby if he tried.

"And give your idiocy the reinforcement it's so desperately craving? Hardly."

"Your loss... Still, next time Pike drags me to dinner, you're coming with me."

"No."

"I'll be fun..."

"I'm working."

"You don't even know when the next one is."

"Doesn't matter."

Huffing, "That hurts, Bones; it really does. I'm just trying to look out for your best interests."

"My best interests," he repeats disbelievingly.

"Yes, of course," Jim said honestly, sitting up to stare at the doctor, who was seated on his own bed, a couple of cheap, Academy-issued padds surrounding him as he tried to do whatever homework he'd not had time to work on earlier in the week 'cause of his shifts at Starfleet Medical. "Doctor or not, you can't spend all your time holed up in here, being a good little cadet and studying and all that shit. It's not healthy. You have to go out and have fun every once and a while."

There had been times in the few weeks he'd known him that Jim had wondered if Bones had ever really let himself have fun, ever, or if his ex-wife had taken that in the divorce too. It was kinda depressing, really. The guy practically was crying out for a good night out or, at the very least, a good lay. Jim thinks, if he'd time, he might just make it his mission to see the doc had some fun some time before they graduate.

"Kid, your idea of fun and the rest of the universe's are two radically different things."

_("...and he can't help it.")_

"I told you," a hint of exasperation leaking through, "I wasn't looking for a fight last night. We just kinda... stumbled upon one."

It was true, too. He'd no idea what Bones had gotten up do Friday – he assumed it was very boring, involving a lot of studying and a shift at Starfleet Medical, without any sex or drugs or rock and roll at all, – but Saturday Jim had tried to initiate Bones into the art of the Grand Kirk Bar Crawl, dragging him to six before they'd stumbled into a fight over- well, Jim couldn't exactly remember what it had been about, only that he had almost literally stumbled into it and hadn't even given the guy who thought it would be a good idea to give him a black eye more than a broken jaw in return. All in all, a very sedate disagreement as far as far as _Jim, who never met a fight he didn't like_ went. "'Sides, you had fun before that, and tonnes of fun afterwards."

Rolling his eyes, "'Cause patching attention-seeking anorexics with delusions of intelligence like you is just my idea of fun."

"Of course it is," Jim said confidently, entirely ignoring the anorexic comment – because, after all, he just didn't notice when he got hungry, not really, not any more; he ate when he remembered, most the time, not because he didn't want to – as well as the quip about _delusions of intelligence_. "You wouldn't have become a doctor if it wasn't."

The thing was, though, Jim really didn't know a thing about Bones. He knew that he was divorced and from Georgia and had like three or four specialities, any one of which would have caused his recruitment officer to salivate, but that was about all. Of course, all that he'd shared in return was that he was from Iowa and trying to do the command track in three years (which Bones had called crazy, not even knowing how many classes he'd placed out of), but still.

The doctor only grumbled, so he guessed his guess had to be pretty close to mark. Still, not one to be denied, "If it makes you feel any better, I think Pike's dinner was something you might've enjoyed."

"He spend half the evening patching your ass back together too?"

"No. But his idea of an adviser-advisee dinner is to drag me to _his_ old adviser's house. And, boy, did he ever have an adviser: Rear Admiral Charles Tucker." He flicks off his own padd, deciding the half-dozen messages waiting there can all wait, and looks up at Bones expectantly.

"That supposed to mean something to me?"

"God, Bones, don't you know your pre-Federation history?" After getting a look that clearly says, _no, but I'm surprised you do_, Jim decides to continue. "He was Chief Engineer on Earth's first warp five ship and captain of the _Challenger_ during the Romulan War." Unable to help himself, "You _do_ remember learning about the Romulan War, right? Anyway, Admiral Tucker's been dead for years, but his wife is still around – you know who she is?"

Not even glancing up from his padds, "Just spit it out already Jim."

"Well, she's a professor now, but she was Chief of Naval Operations for _ages_ and a whole bunch of other high up things in Starfleet that you couldn't care the least about, I'm sure, but his wife's Fleet Admiral T'Pol."

_That _caught the doctor's attention, causing his hazel eyes to flash with what might've been the most interest he'd seen in the man, well, ever. "The Admiral's wife is Vulcan?"

"Yeah. Kinda cool too. They have three kids too – the daughters live on Vulcan, apparently, but their son's the captain of the _Ramesses_. I figured you'd have fun asking all about their family tree and all that, 'cause you were saying the other day about being interested in the comparative physiology part of the xenobiology class you were stuck in."

Surprise flickers across his face. "Really?"

"Yeah." The idea of Bones going up to the admiral and asking about her children's biochemistries had kept Jim entertained through most the evening.

Not that the dinner had been _bad_ or anything, but T'Pol shared her house with Admiral Jonathan Archer – yes _that_ Admiral Archer, who'd been captain of the first _Enterprise _and president of the Federation in the 2180s – and he'd seemed intent on asking Jim every question he could think of, from where he grew up to what (fuck it all) his brother was doing. While he may have been the master of the non-answer and the careful evasion, three of the people in the room had been or were starship captains, so it was a lot harder than the normal inquiries he had to dodge from fellow students or drunks or professors.

_("None of us can help the things life has done to us.")_

He'd never realized how difficult it was keeping up with all his lies before. Or how many things he didn't talk about. Or let himself think about.

_("They're done before you realize it...")_

It's all rather exhausting, really.

Pike, however, seemed to think the dinner went well. Which it had, more or less. And any other time he might've been beyond thrilled to meet a guy whose existence was proof that his goal of becoming _Jim, who was a greater hero than his father ever was and lived to tell the tale _was possible. But the fact of the matter he'd been through some less through interrogations than that dinner. He'd wished the whole time for the only other guest, T'Pol's young great-granddaughter, Lisa, to prattle on about her school or friends or hair or whatever else a fifteen-year-old with seven-eighths human genes might want to go on about over dinner. She hadn't, however, and so he was forced to be the _Jim, who doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything _he saves for survivors of the _Kelvin_ and, recently, flag officers.

He'd have thought people who'd risen to echelons above reality in the 'Fleet would have learned to be more politic than to grill him on things he clearly did not want to talk about. Or think about. Ever.

_("...and once they're done they make you do other things...")_

"I can't believe it."

"That they're still alive? I know, right? I mean, Vulcans live to be like older than god, so her I can get, but Archer's got to be at least a hundred if he's a day."

"No, that you actually remembered the name of one of the classes I'm in."

Pouting a bit, because being _Jim, who it's a minor miracle still has a pair of braincells to rub together_ is almost as exhausting as Admiral Archer's questions, "I _do_ listen, Bones," he leans forward far enough to snatch one of the padds off the doctor's bed before falling back onto his own.

"I was using that, you idiot."

He examines it for a minute before tossing it back. He can think of twelve ways to make it faster, more user-friendly, and able to hold twice as much data just off the top of his head. "Piece of junk anyway."

"It's Starfleet standard issue."

"I rest my case."

Sighing, "Don't you have homework or something kid?"

_("...until at last everything comes between you...") _

Maybe it's because it's been just one of those weeks. Maybe it's just because he's hardly been sleeping and is just so god-damn tired now. Maybe it's because he's been on the verge of a panic attack since Wednesday and all the stress had to come out sometime.

He can't run – he's paralysed with something he cannot name (not fear, he knows fear and this isn't it), but maybe it's the inevitability of the memory, which will haunt him everywhere, a ghost whose spectre he will never escape, not even if he manages to outshine his father's memory – can't breathe, can't fucking think, and all he knows is _shit, not this, not now_. Regardless, in that moment, it's not Bones' voice he's hearing, not the stupid, popcorn-ed ceiling of their dorm he's seeing.

No, in that moment he's in the Governor's Palace on Tarsus IV. He's seeing one of the shorter, dark hallways on one of the lower floors, in one of the areas of the building mostly attended by servants and minor government officials. For that reason the walls are rough and the lighting system faulty. There's a blue tint to the stones, to the shadows, and it adds to the sense of derealization that's suddenly overcome him.

The subspace communications systems were kept on that hall, locked behind a door with a code that changed every twenty-four hours. He knew he could break the code. Fuck, he'd _designed_ the code for the governor, not knowing that the algorithm he'd been messing about with in math class one day was going to be used to update security all over the palace, with the intention that Starfleet's standard overrides wouldn't work if they tried to get inside.

All he had to do was get off a message to the nearest 'Fleet outpost telling them there was no plague, that it'd all been a smokescreen for Kodos' real plans; that they needed to come quick 'cause Kodos had already killed four thousand and who knew where he would stop.

He'd just heard the lock on the door _click_ when there came a voice from behind him, _"Don't you have homework or something kid?"_ It was Theo, the oldest of Kodos' converts, the one in charge of their little gang of would-be conquerors. Theo absolutely _hated_ Jim 'cause Jim was the governor's favourite, not Theo, and he was the fastest and the smartest and the best of them all.

He remembers turning around, a shit-eating grin on his face as he tried to be _Jim, __who could talk his way out of anything_, and seeing Theo standing down the hall blocking the exit, a phaser in his hands. A quick glance to the other side of hall showed two more of the older kids – Harerin and Raleliel – blocking the stairs there, both also armed. _"Hey guys,"_ he remembers beginning, hands going wide, _"what-?"_

When he woke an untold number of hours later, he was in one of the cells far below the palace, not knowing if he was going to live or die.

_("...and what you'd like to be...")_

And, _shit_, he knows Bones didn't mean anything by it – _couldn't_ have meant anything by it – but, as he continues to lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, he tries not to let it show, but Bones is a doctor and knows that sudden bouts of shortness of breath and sweating and trembling aren't normal, and, as good as Jim is, he can't hide everything, not when Bones is in the fucking room with him.

But he can't, and, before he knows it, Bones is at his side, quietly trying to calm him down and rubbing god-damn circles on his back and, when he's calm enough, plying him with alcohol, which he's fairly certain isn't an approved method of dealing with attacks like these.

By the end of it, he's so exhausted he falls into a deep, dreamless sleep that may or may not have been expedited by Bones and a hypo and, when he wakes hours later, feeling worse (if possible) then when he'd stumbled into the room the night before, it's only because the doc is shaking him and saying he's going to miss his 0800 class if he doesn't get going soon.

_("...and you've lost your true self forever.")_

It's two days before his schedule and McCoy's overlap. He'd kinda been dreading that moment all morning and maybe even some of the day before, but all the doctor does is ask, "How you doing, kid?"

Jim gives him his best, cockiest smile and an, "Okay," not wanting to give anything away.

"Want to talk abut it?"

His smile barely wavers. "No."

"Okay," is all Bones says before going on to gripe about the latest stupidities he's had the distinct misfortune to have to treat. He never says another word about that night.

_("None of us can help the things life has done to us.")_

Jim thinks he just might love the guy for that.

* * *

a/n: **first**, curse my internet, 'cause I just wrote out the a/n but the connection died and so I lost it all and this is me redoing it.

**second**, for ENT fans going wtf, yes, I know they had Trip die in "These are the Voyages," but I remain a diehard TnT fan and am basically disregarding that whole episode, as everyone should. For more on my specific changes to the ENT cannon, see my story "A Grief Shared," which will, eventually, bridge the gap between season 4 of ENT and the reboot cannon. This chappie was supposed to be Kirk-meets-Archer-and-T'Pol, but that didn't work out the way I wanted it (thus the delay) and became something completely other...

**third**, the quote is from _Long Day's Journey into Night_ by Eugene O'Neill, one of my favourite playwrights ever. _Mourning Becomes Electra_ is my favourite by him, but this and _Strange Interlude_ are close seconds. Anyway, that being said, it was difficult to find a quote for this at first but, once I did, boy did it fit ever.

**fourth**, I think I offically can go no lower in my ST obsession. I've been a Trekkie since I was like _born_ (there was an amusing episode in kindergarden where, instead of reciting the pledge of allegence, I recited the "these are the voyages of..." speech instead), but ST:IX has renewed that passion, especially since DS9 and ENT were canceled. I've seen the new movie like 30 times, at least, and read the novel... and have the audiobook too. That being said, I was at the bookstore the other day and bought a magazine I'd never heard of before simply because Chris Pine was on the cover (the mag is _Details_ btw). I have now become one of those girls... and, sad to say, am not nearly as ashamed as I should be.

**fifth**, reveiws, questions, comments, concerns, commiserations, general guesses of where you think I'll end up going with this story, etc are always appreciated. -aadarshinah


	7. Finnegan's Pub

_Chapter Seven: Finnegan's Old-Fashioned Irish Pub and Grille_

* * *

The Academy had a rosy afterglow after his panic attack.

___("...__he had the unfortunate gift_...")

Well, more so after Bones' subsequent agreement to ___not ask jack shit _about it, but it was still there. Sure, some of his classes are crazy easy, but a few are educating and the occasional one is actually interesting, but he's enjoying them for the most part.

His obsession – the Academy in three, a berth on the _Enterprise _when she ships out, and getting his own ship as soon as humanly possible – was new, was fresh, and every experience was only deepening it. He can almost pretend that he's happy like this, slowly falling into the abyss that is Starfleet and its rules and regulations and uniforms and jargon, almost drowning in everything there is to learn. He's only happy when he doesn't have to think about life, his in particular, and there are only two ways he's found so far to stop the memories that will never end, the thoughts that he cannot seem to silence: one's the mixture of alcohol, blood, and adrenaline he'd been seeking out in every bar between Riverside and Ithaca without ever truly finding; the other's jumping down the rabbit hole, taking an idea and running with it, following it down every winding path and darkened alley until the only ways left were dead or so over-trod they might well have been.

Both are dangerous, Jim knows. Both are familiar to him, more familiar than any of the few people who've managed to stick with him through the years. Still, as dangerous as alcohol and obsessions both are, neither can last for ever and, though this plans haven't changed, there's really not much further he can go without resorting memorizing the regulations verbatim, not at this point in his Academy career, and he's starting to feel bored. Bored, and not a little cheated.

It was stupid, but he did, and he blamed it all on Bones. Because, if it hadn't been for Bones, he wouldn't have had the panic attack in the first place. And, if Bones hadn't gone and been so ___nice_ about it (read: didn't ask a single fucking question, which was more than most people in his position would have), Jim wouldn't have gotten it into his head that things could ___work out_ and, oh, he didn't know, ___not_ be the screwed up shit the 'verse was trying to pass off as his life. And if he hadn't gotten that messed-up thought into his head, he wouldn't feel so let down now, three weeks after the initial attack.

It wasn't like he was expecting that much excitement or adventure or really wild things – not 'til he graduated and shipped out, anyway – but he wanted more excitement than this, certainly. This being the fourth straight night he'd spent in his dorm trying to be a good little boy and doing his homework and all that shit rather than, well, the ___genius-level repeat-offender_ shit that had gotten him in this mess in the first place.

___("...__ of __seeing things__ as they were...____")_

And it was all Bones' fault.

Which, again, sucked, because he couldn't even bring himself to be mad or anything at the doctor, 'cause, well, he had been nice about it. And he's not asked Jim where the library was that they were keeping all his issues nor so much as even looked at him like he wanted to ask something, not once in all these weeks. Bones had just gone on exactly as he had before, the only notable exception being his discovery of a coffee shop tucked into some strange corner of Starfleet Medical and the subsequent rants over ___idiotic west-coast hippies with their fruffy drinks who'll come crying to him when the heart attack comes_ and the lack of decent coffee north of the Mason-Dixon. He's actually even starting to like the doctor's constant dudgeon in some strange, sick, fucked-up way, 'cause it's nothing like _Jim, who doesn't give a shit about anyone_ or anything or ___Jim, who's the type of clean-cut, well-adjusted all-American boy scout the 'Fleet wants for an officer_ or any of the other masks he's picked up over the years. It, like everything else about McCoy, is so authentic and genuine that it fascinates him and is, slowly, threatening to become his newest obsession even though, as a rule, he doesn't obsess over people, only ideas.

He still hasn't figured out what strange, fucked-up reasons are keeping Bones with him though.

___("...and the reality which was offered him__...")_

Frank, he knows, puts up with him out of some misguided loyalty to Mom's memory and some hint of guilt for not fighting harder when Jim wanted to go live with Mom's sister on Tarsus after the funeral.

The laid-back way he'd taken Mom's constant off-planet deployments had carried over to him and Sam. It wasn't that he was neglectful – never that, though there'd been one or two times right after Mom's diagnosis and her death a short while later that had ended in Frank drinking himself into a silent, morose daze which nothing could break, no matter how much they yelled or cried or pleaded, - it was just he was never very involved. So long as they did their homework, Jim and Sam, and were home before curfew, Frank didn't really care what they got up to. Jim, who'd always kinda lived in his head even then had loved it. But Sam... Sam had been six when the ___Kelvin_ happened, and, though Mom and Dad had been deployed as often as not, he'd been used to more than Frank could give.

Jim still thinks that's why Sam left, to find whatever it was that Jim had never known, that had disappeared from their lives the moment he was born.

___("... differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.__")_

And Cheryl, who'd been ___Jim, who was such a failure__'s _advisor through all three of his degrees, she only put up with him because, the year before he'd arrived at Cornell, her son had finally lost his battle with addiction and overdosed on some combination of alien drugs and alcohol in a bathroom stall in a nameless club somewhere outside of Berlin. The kid had been about Jim's age then when he'd started using, and the club was the type he, like most young college kids, had favoured at the time, all pulsing music and pulsating lights and pulsant people. That, combined with the fact that he was a fifteen-year-old kid on his own, tackling one of the most challenging majors an ivy league college could offer in this day and age, had brought out the maternal in Cheryl. Though she never said as much, she vowed not to fail him as she had failed her son, that much was obvious. She never asked him outright to change, just gave him these sad, terrible looks on the occasions he'd stumble into her office for a meeting high or hung over that almost – ___almost_ – made him want to change. He never did, but she always took his jail-house calls and, when he was in Ithaca, picked him up from the nameless dives he'd taken too after he could no longer take the unbearable flavour of naivety present in even the dirtiest dance clubs.

Jim knows that, even at the end, all she saw when she looked at him was the ghost of her dead son.

___("__He did not know how wide a country...")_

Sydney's the only other one to stick around for any length of time, and she's another ghost story, one he's never gotten all the parts to, despite the fact he's been crashing her comp labs at Riverside for almost three years now. She's from Australia originally, as cliché as it sounds, and is a regular bushwhacker, with this amazing blonde hair ___down to there_ and the bluest eyes he's seen outside of a mirror. For a while, he was sure that she only let him touch her computers 'cause Frank ran security at the yard and she was trying to hook up with his step-dad (he has no idea if this is true or not, but that hasn't stopped him from teasing both mercilessly about it, despite the fact both claim their relationship is purely professional), but that was before he started stumbling across parts of her past: comm-calls in locked rooms with raised voices that can never quite be made out, questions about her home answered with the wistfulness of one who knows she'll never see it again; a holo of Sydney from five years ago with a boy who could only be her brother in an unmarked folder at the back of her filing cabinet, behind even the chief programmer's override codes she'd thought she'd hidden well enough.

Jim's fairly sure she sees her brother in him and that – not Frank, not the master's he'd literally pulled out of his back pocket, the diploma bent and a little torn – was why she let him in.

___("...__arid and precipitous...")_

He's not a genius for nothing, Jim. Even he can see the pattern. The people who leave see Dad's ghost in him. The people who stay see someone else's. The thing is, though, Bones doesn't seem to be seeing ___any_ ghosts when he's with Jim. It's the most brilliant thing in the world, part of that honesty thing of the doctor's that Jim doesn't know quite what to make of.

But, ghosts or no ghosts (or, perhaps, because of them), Jim still feels himself falling out of love with one obsession and standing on the precipice of another, enough so where the idea of memorizing the Starfleet Code of Conduct is starting to look like less of a good idea than say, oh, rooting around Bones' things or using some creative computing to find out about his past. Normally, Jim wouldn't have any issues with either – after all, the first rule that anyone, criminal or otherwise, should remember is that, if you don't want something to be discovered, don't write it down, don't tell anyone about it, and, by God, if you talk in your sleep, don't sleep either; once something's put out into the real world, there're no take-backs, no telling who might have overheard, no telling if there's someone smarter who might be able to hack the mainframe – but, for one, Bones came with only the clothes on his back and an impressive but dull med-kit he's already seen the inside of and, for two, it's kinda pushing even Jim's scruples to spy on a man who doesn't seem to hide anything. Which is surprising, 'cause Jim wasn't aware he had any scruples. Apparently he does, and that gives him something to chew on for a good hour.

After that he decides to hit the bars even though Bones is working a shift at Starfleet Medical. He's not going to be able to keep himself from digging into the doctor's past for much longer if he stays in his dorm, and maybe it's just because he can't bring himself to care after a month of self-enforced good behaviour, but he finds he'd rather risk the damage he might do off-campus to what he'd do if left alone with his padd and four bare walls. He tells himself it's because he's growing as a person and not because he's rather interested in learning about the doc the old-fashioned way, 'cause that would be just crazy.

___("...__must be crossed...")_

Crazy just so happens to be the story of his life, though, and he should know better than to expect otherwise by now, 'cause, just as he's slipping out of a hole-in-the-wall called Finnegan's off Divisadero, a pair of lagers making him feel more light-hearted than he had since the rosy glow had started to fade, he hears a scream coming from further down the alley. Light-hearted or not, he's still ___Jim, who never met a fight he didn't like__, _and, if he needed any more incentive, the scream sounded kinda feminine, and if there was one thing Jim didn't like, it was guys who thought they could prove how tough they were by beating up girls. That just wasn't kosher, not in his book

Before he consciously could make the choice to go and help ('cause, in his experience, people didn't scream quite that way if things were consensual), he was there, at the midpoint of the alley, behind a collection of foul-smelling and graffitied trash bins, were a pair of guys Academy uniform attempting to pin a girl with hair that shone fire-engine red even in near-dark. They seemed young, the guys – plebs, like him, probably, only fresh out of high school – but were burly and, from the looks of it, had managed to corner the girl as she was making her way towards Finnegan's from Scott Street. Still, by the way the girl was fighting, even pinned with her face pressed into the wall, it was clear that they must've gotten incredibly lucky managing to catch her in the first place.

_("...before the traveller through life...")_

All this he took in quickly, accessing the danger to the girl as, without thinking of the consequences to himself, he almost casually announced, "You know, even if your universal translators are broken, a scream like that generally means 'no' in every language."

Naturally, the young cadets didn't take well to being snuck up upon and tried their hand at fighting him. Their swings were wild, though, and, once they let go of the girl, she turned out to be very adept at helping to subdue her attackers. Not that they very particularly talented would-be assailants, but one managed to get in a couple of good punches, bloodying his face and bruising his side as he'd come into contact with the side of one of the dumpsters before Jim managed to knock him out.

"Thanks," the girl said brightly when both were down, and, only now able to see her face, Jim realized that the girl was an Orion, which probably explained why the cadets had thought they could get away with attacking her. "Didn't expect anyone one be waiting when I came down the alley. Hardly anyone takes this shortcut... Name's Gaila by the way."

"Jim Kirk," Jim said, somewhat taken aback by her causal brushing off of her attack and subsequent rescue, even in his slightly-drunken daze. Still, her grin was infectious and, even with his split lip, he found himself smiling back. That and, even bruised and tousled as she was, she was, like all Orions, she was drop-dead gorgeous. He'd never seen one with red hair, though.

"Oooh," Gaila squealed, cutting off his thought. "I've heard so much about you from my roommate. I kept on asking her to invite you out for drinks with us since you sounded so interesting, but she always said no... I don't think she likes you very much. I don't know why. You seem nice enough... Say, what do you say about going for those drinks now? Maybe not at Finnegan's. I don't want to be there when these guys' friends come looking for him. The Orange Peel, maybe? You been yet? It's on Marina Street and has the _widest_ selection of off-planet alcohol in San Francisco and the _best_ music and the _greatest_ theme parties, though I don't think they have one going on tonight..." Gaila frowned at this, then smiled again, and, putting a hand on his arm, said in the same cheerful tone she'd said everything else in, "But, still, it's the greatest. Wanna come?"

"I-" he began, then looked back at the two cadets unconscious in the alleyway next to them. "Shouldn't we wait and comm the cops first?"

"What's the point? They never believe it when I say the boys started it."

Finding it odd to be on the other side of the call-the-cops argument for once (and slightly heady from the beers and the fight), Jim pressed, "Hey, just 'cause you're an Orion doesn't mean they have the right to assault you like that. Even if you don't want to press charges for yourself, letting them get away with it will make them think they can get away with it. And shit-heads like this," he toed the nearest one with his boot, trying to keep his blood from boiling. Orion or not, no one _deserved_ to be assaulted or _asked_ to be attacked, "don't deserve to be wandering around free." Hell, he'd been in jails too good for the likes of them. The only saving grace to all of this was that it looked liked he'd intervened before they'd a chance to rape her.

Gaila's smile, if possible, grew even brighter. "That's possibly the sweetest thing anyone's said to me in ages," she announced, leaning forward and kissing him on his unbruised cheek.

_("...comes to an acceptance of reality.")_

And, the 'verse being what it was, that was when the cops arrived.

* * *

a/n: So, yeah. Slightly different chappie, again. Skipped ahead a couple of weeks, so now we're at the start of June '55. Got most of this written last week, but Thanksgiving and the "vaction" involved took me away from my comp for a couple days... The last thousand words were all written in, oh, the last hour or so after I got back from my trip. Which _did_ give me this whole 'nother crazy idea for a ST:IX AU that's scribbled away in my notebook and which, if I can translate it, might be posted. One day. If I ever finish it. It's not like I don't have a thousand things to be working on as it is... *rolls eyes*

So, anyway, the quote's part of one of my favourite bits from W. Somerset Maugham's _Of Human Bondage, _one of my favourite books ever, despite the fact it was written in 1915. It's one of the few books from that era that I actually like and, for those of you interested, is a bit like _A Prayer for Owen Meany, _another great book and the closest I can get to describing _Of Human Bondage_ to someone who has never read it.

That being said, I've also delved further into my obsession (see last chappie's a/n; thanks to everyone who expressed support, it truely helps) and discovered this whole 'nother ST:IX fic site that I've devoured almost everything on already... le sigh. Anyway, read, reveiw, please, thank you.


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